Get Your Studio Started with the DAW Software Used by All the PROS

The term DAW stands for Digital Audio Workstation.  It is the software program that you will use to record, edit, and mix your songs.  It is the center piece of your computer recording studio.

Sound important? It is.

Your choice for a DAW will one of the most important purchase decisions that you make for your entire studio.

DAW's in the Home Studio

Not all studios have DAW's.  They aren't technically a requirement, but you should definitely use one.

Here's why:

Before the days of computer recording when everything was recorded to analog tape, great songs were being made everyday without DAW's.  The problem is that these studios were insanely expensive.

Today it's much cheaper.

With today's recording technology, DAW's have made it affordable for the average musician to record his own music at home.   That is why they have become the standard recording platform for studios of all sizes and budgets.

It would be foolish to build a recording studio today based on anything else.

Best DAW Buying Guide

If you are currently building a home recording studio and you are wondering which DAW software to get, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed as there are so many different products to choose from.

Luckily, if you want the absolute best DAW software on the market, there is really only one choice: Get Pro Tools!  If you only listen to one piece of advice on this entire site, listen to this one.

It's true that there are DAW's out there such as Apple's Logic, which are more than capable of attaining professional results just as easily as with Pro Tools.  A few other good ones that come to mind are Steinberg Cakewalk, Ableton Live, MOTU Digital Performer, and Cakewalk Sonar.  They are all quality programs but forget about them because it does not matter.  Pro Tools is the industry standard.  The VAST majority of studios out there, from professional to amateur, use Pro Tools as their DAW.  For that reason alone, you should as well.

If you ever want to work in someone else's studio, have someone else work in yours, or collaborate with another studio in any way, it will be a thousand times easier if you are both running Pro Tools.  If one day in the future, one of those other DAW's takes over and becomes the standard, you should probably use that one.  Until then, get Pro Tools.

You basically have two options when choosing a Pro Tools DAW for your home studio setup.  There's Pro Tools 10, formerly known as Pro Tools LE, and then there's Pro Tools HD.  In the upcoming lessons we will look at each of them in depth and examine the most important differences between the two.